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AG Lynch Goes after North Carolina

North Carolina is a textbook example of how the Obama administration has gone about their mission to fundamentally transform America with pen and phone. Yesterday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch showed off the administration’s creative writing ability by unilaterally rewriting a 52-year-old law to facilitate that White House’s narrative. Of course, this has been the M.O. of the Obama administration for seven and a half years — as we’ve seen with everything from health care and abortion to marriage and gun policy.

In what can only be described as classic DOJ, the office fired off a nasty letter to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) claiming H.B. 2 (the law giving businesses the right to set their own bathroom policies) somehow violates the Civil Rights Act. According to the army of wannabe legislators at the Justice Department, the Tar Heels are treating “transgender employees, whose self-described gender identity does not match their ‘biological sex’… differently from similarly-situated non-transgender employees.” If that’s the case, then maybe the DOJ ought to send a letter to itself, because so does every federal park and building in America!

Governor McCrory, who’s already stared down billionaire CEOs, the liberal media, and the LGBT activist bullies, wasn’t about to be intimidated by the president’s lawless cronies. Still, the administration’s tactics continue to astound him — and every American. Speaking to business leaders last night, the governor called the letter “something we’ve never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime.” “This is no longer just a North Carolina issue. This impacts every state, every university and almost every employee in the United States of America,” he said. “All those will have to comply with new definitions of requirements by the federal government regarding restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities in both the private and public sector.”

Lt. Governor Dan Forest, who has enough backbone for the entire state, couldn’t believe his eyes. “To use our children and their educational futures as pawns to advance an agenda that will ultimately open those same children up to exploitation at the hands of sexual predators is, by far, the sickest example of the depths the … administration will stoop to [to] ‘fundamentally transform our nation,'” he fired back. Thanks to Target, who made this issue a very real one for most Americans with its bathroom free-for-all, millions of Americans are already fired up to fight back.

Let’s not forget: this is a transgender policy that, as recently as a few years ago, was too extreme for even Democrats to support. The Left has tried — and failed — over and over to pass a version of this gender lunacy on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), but even the president’s own party wouldn’t bite. So, as usual, the administration is deciding to take matters into its own hands. After all, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) admitted just last week, most of the far-Left’s priorities can’t be accomplished legislatively anyway. “[P]assing bills is so tiresome and inefficient,” David French wrote sarcastically, “especially when a mere memo can change the law, and the Obama administration can be confident that leftist judges will uphold most anything done [by] Obama…”

As FRC’s own Chris Gacek points out, “This is not a judicial opinion — it’s a threatening letter from the Department of Justice.” What the DOJ is advocating, he goes on “is a radical re-interpretation of ‘sex’ in these statutory sections of Title VII. And even if [leaders] were to go this route on ‘sex,’ it’s not clear that bathrooms arranged biologically should be unlawful.” French took the issue a step further, asking the most obvious question, which is: “Is there a single person who believes that the Congress that passed Title VII [in 1964] believed that it was doing away with the distinction between male and female — making it completely dependent on individual preference — and thus granting men access to women and girls in bathrooms, lockers, and showers?” No more than a founding father wrote a “right” to same-sex marriage or abortion in the shadows of the U.S. Constitution! “I wonder…” French ponders, “will the DOJ intervene to defend the state from liability the first time a woman or child is assaulted in a bathroom by a man who was granted a legal right to be there? Quack science meets quack law and social justice warriors rejoice.”

Meanwhile, the groundswell against this insanity is only intensifying. In Palatine, Illinois — another one of the Obama administration’s targets — parents aren’t taking the government’s coercion lying down. This time, the Department of Education tag-teamed the school district after a boy complained that he couldn’t use the girl’s restrooms and locker rooms. The superintendent held out as long as he could, until the agency dangled federal dollars in front of administrators. Worried about losing their funds, Palatine surrendered.

Now, 51 families are suing. Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are representing the 73 parents who are furious that their child’s privacy and innocence are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. “The agency based its threat on its inaccurate interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 federal law that — contrary to the agency’s opinion, actually authorizes schools to retain single-sex restrooms and locker rooms,” attorney Jeremy Tedesco argued. “Protecting students from inappropriate exposure to the opposite sex is not only perfectly legal, it’s a school district’s duty.”

The Obama administration believes they can bypass Congress. They can even ignore the Constitution. But as long as the Constitution exists, they cannot silence the people — who, like us, think the White House and the Commander and Chief should be focused on America’s safety, not America’s bathrooms. A government big enough to control the bathroom policies of communities across the nation, is a government big enough to flush our freedoms. Watch our new video calling out the president for his backwards priorities.

Author

Tony Perkins is president of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council. He is a former member of the Louisiana legislature where he served for eight years, and he is recognized as a legislative pioneer for authoring measures like the nation’s first Covenant Marriage law. (Via FRC’s Washington Update. Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.)

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